What we've been up to lately...

So I know that we have not blogged in a while, but here is a little bit of what we've been up to recently.  

This is my former roommate Lindsey Cain and her new husband Jeffrey Rhea.  Lindsey was my second roommate since I have been here at Southeastern and I am so glad that we were able to live together.  They had a beautiful outdoor wedding in July and here is a picture of them cutting their cake.

Aaron's former roommate, Aaron Rice, also got married this summer.  Aaron was able to be an usher in the wedding.  Here is a picture of Aaron and Lane.
I wasn't able to go to Aaron and Lane's wedding because I was in another wedding of another former roommate in the same weekend.  My friend and former roommate from Campbell, Mandy Hinson was married to Paul Flannery in August.  Please check out www.nasimage.blogspot.com and see some pictures from the wedding.  This is our friend Ashley's website.  She and her husband David are really great photographers and you should definitely check them out.  

We also had our church's Vacation Bible School recently.  We have been reaching out to a neighborhood close by our church in an effort to reach our community, so we decided to have our VBS in the neighborhood park.  We had an amazing turnout, around 50 or so kids from the neighborhood came out every night.  It was great to be able to teach and love these kids that would not have been able to come to a VBS if it was at our church.  It was a great week and we were able to get to know many of the kids and adults in the community and share the gospel with them.  Here is a picture of some of the kids during worship.
Finally, we had a church yard sale last weekend.  We raised almost $500 for the youth to go towards different trips that we will take this year.  The church members donated all sorts of items and the youth helped to price and sell them.  I didn't have a picture to show what we sold, but here is a picture of some of the youth and adults that helped out so much.  Thank you to everyone that could donate items, and or come and help!!

Anyways, I will try and blog more regularly so i can post a few more pictures of some things we've been up to.  We have also started back to classes so our schedules are getting a little more hectic, and Aaron is on the lookout for a part-time job that can still allow him to work at church and take classes, so I'm sure it may be a while.  Have a great week!

Creed Camp

We just got back yesterday from taking our youth group to Creed Camp at Anderson University in South Carolina. This is the first of hopefully many summers that we will be working with other local churches in our area to help put on a biblically solid camp for our youth groups. The Jeff Capps band lead worship, some of the pastors from the participating churches preached, and we had a lot of fun competing in different sports and activities

These were just a few pics from the week...

New updates to come...

I was so excited to hear this week that at least a couple of people read our blog. We have a lot of new updates that we will be posting soon. Aaron just got back from Uganda, our church softball team has started playing, I have been working on a few card-making and sewing projects, and we are getting ready to take our youth to camp. All this to say, there will be a lot of posts coming up and I hope you like our new header design. I was told by a friend to check out a blog of someone they knew and found great grabbie designs. She makes really great blogheaders using digital scrapbooking. Please check out her page at http://greatgrabbiedesigns.blogspot.com/2008/05/welcome.html

Updates will be coming soon!

Updates on Dylan

Just a reminder to keep praying for the Shugart family.
www.updatesondylan.blogspot.com

Our hearts break for them during this difficult time and ask that you would remember this sweet family in prayer.

Church Softball and the Gondaliers

So I was really planning on posting some pics of our church softball team, but as I was going through the pictures I couldn't resist posting some of these adorable kids that those of us ladies not playing get to watch during the practice. Here are just a few pics of Nathaneal and Tori during one of our practices. I promise to post some pics of the softball practice soon.






Last Thursday Aaron and I decided to skip our last class and go see Christine (one of our youth) in her musical at school, The Gondaliers. It was a great performance and it was so much fun to see Christine hamming it up on the stage :o)

Here is Christine and her mom, Mary, after the show...

I love plants

I have always loved planting different flowers and plants. Here are some new ones...
This is not really a new one. It's a geranium I've had for a while. It's usually more pretty than the picture shows, but I wanted to include a pic of it.
These are my double impatients. They have just started blooming and the pink colors in them are really amazing. Sorry for the fuzzy picture.

This is one of my three tomato plants. It's the first time that I have tried tomatoes on my own so I am really excited to see if they produce. There are three different kinds of them that I planted, but I will spare you the details.
Here is my squash plant. Squash is definitely one of my favorite veggies and I especially love eating grilled squash in the summertime. I cannot wait until they start growing more.
This is from the honeysuckly plant on my front porch. It smells nice, but man does it grow like crazy.
Here is the honeysuckle a little untrimmed. Haha.
These are my purple and white begonias. They are so pretty and have been so easy to maintain. They require a lot of sunlight so they hang out on the front porch most of the time.

Stuff Christians Like . . .

"Flags, handbells, and puppets."

"Boycotting stuff."

"Rooting for secret Christians on American Idol"

"Mixing sign language and music"


If you have heard any of these phrases, or even worse, if you are guilty of participating in any of these things, you are probably an Evangelical Christian (and probably a Southern Baptist), or you at least know someone who is. And if you shudder whenever you hear any of these phrases, you are probably like me - an Evangelical, Southern Baptist who is (sadly) well aware of the charicature that the American church has painted of itself to the watching world.

All of those quotes are from entries in a blog that Sarah and I love to read which takes some of the idiosynchrasies of the American "Christian" subculture and satirizes them, or at least simply brings them to our attention. It is hillarious. They are painfully true. And hopefully these observations will make us think twice next time we try to make a war-themed mens ministry, or buy more bible fanny packs, or getting highly specialized bibles, or dancing with enough room for the holy spirit, or quoting the message whenever the real bible doesnt say what you want it to, or breaking up with your girlfriend after camp because God told you to, or taking spiritual-gift inventories that are hundreds of questions long, or fearing the rapture would come before you lost your virginity, or rededicating your life (again), using the one "seminary word" you know, or making email addresses that go something like, GodisGoodandBeautiful777@yahoo.comm

Check out the blog, Stuff Christians like, at http://www.stuffchristianslike.blogspot.com/.


- Aaron